The Princess and The Pirate

Lillian was panting. It was the first time in her refined life she had ever been out of breath. Her chest heaved and she felt a completely new burning sensation between her ribs. Wheezing, the queen brought her hand up to her aching head, feeling the hot, moist wound still pulsing. She propped her lithe form against a suit of armor, needing to recuperate. Her heart was making a racket.

That barbarian had the audacity to club her with a lotion bottle! The pain had resonated down to her jaw, shooting across her face and scalp, but the wound was nothing compared to the indignity. How dare he? Lillian’s vision blurred and the torches that lit the hallway doubled and spun wildly.

Could an iron maiden be used on a man? She didn’t see why it couldn’t. She’d enjoy murdering the pirate and scattering his quartered limbs to every corner of the kingdom! She might even place his severed head in the family tomb next to the pretty, pretty princess. Yes, this plan brought a coquette smile to Lillian’s lips.

Where were the guards? How drunk could they be?!

As she groaned in discomfort, the queen looked at her warped reflection. Her eyes were small and sunken and her nose was bulbous and swollen. Most notably, half her face was wet with disgusting dark blood.

She looked completely common and ugly, as if her own spell had been broken and this display was all that was left.

Kyle’s silhouette reflected off the convex chest piece. It was a bent, hellish image, like Satan himself had scrawled him out. Lillian saw a murderous flash in the eyes of the warped reflection. He wanted her. The pirate snorted like an angry horse, blood flaring off his nostrils.

It sent her into a panic. “Get away from me, you demon!” she screeched. She grabbed the antique armor, throwing it to the ground before sprinting further down the hall.

The flames twisted after her, her bare feet smacking against the stones with a fleshy echo. “Pirates! Guards!” she screamed again.

Undeterred, Kyle kicked the mess of metal out of his warpath. The old helmet bounced, rebounded, and crumbled against a wall, breaking like glass on impact. His swollen face kept a neutral, determined stare. The castle torches stretched unflattering shadows from his dented features. Hearing the faint click of boots, he picked up his pace, needing to bludgeon the queen to death rather quickly.

Kyle was exhausted, solely running on vengeance. Malice and retribution held his bones together.

Lillian was breathing hard, holding onto a tapestry to keep herself upright. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to see straight. The contents of her stomach swirled, trying to fight their way back up. Acid burned up her throat and she coughed, spitting foul phlegm to the shiny floor.

Blood dripped down her chin and from the lobe of her tiny ears. The beating of her heart rang loudly in her head. Her thoughts were like a swarm of mobbing birds; loud, scattered, and obnoxious.

A violently close explosion of ceramics brought the queen back to reality.

It sent Lillian off like a frightened animal. She ran up the first set of stairs she saw, fleeing like a deer into the thicket. Kyle ran after her, sprinting past the broken remains of the lotion bottle. He’d beat her to death with his bare fists and then quietly die on top of her mangled body. Kyle was not planning on living long enough to give anyone the courtesy of his execution.

“Son, you live by the sword, you die by it. It’s a noble style of death, to be crushed by your own shortcomings. At least then you know no one could kill you but yourself. No one else was worthy enough to do it.” Maybe it was misguided wisdom to share with a child, but it was a pirate captain’s wisdom. The Black Duke lived and died on the sea and only had his fish-cleaned bones to show for all his ideology. Certainly now, as Kyle painstakingly climbed this horrible staircase, he felt every pound of his discrepancies. Every step brought more weight upon his back and knees.

The pirate just followed the red hand prints smeared on the narrow stairwell walls, heaving his body upward and forward.

As he climbed the final switchback of the staircase, a book flew at his head. It crashed against the doorway and another came at him. Yellowed pages fluttered about like feathers, cascading knowledge everywhere like a bird shot on the wing.

Lillian huffed, stepping back. She had cornered herself in a small library. The room was taller than it was wide and stacks of books stretched to the ceiling. Long crystal cathedral windows overlooked all the twinkling lights of Rocqueburne and the moon reflected off the ocean.

Kyle said nothing. What was there to say? Charge? Fuck you? No, it was all arbitrary now. Advancing in, he gripped his hands into fists.

“Stay away from me! I’ll let you live if you stay back!” Lillian shouted, grabbing another book, trying to keep as much space between herself and the pirate as she could. She cowered behind the large tome, poking her eyes out from behind the spine.

He didn’t reply and he threw himself at her, taking a heavy volume of Creatures of the Mysterious Deep to the nose, in the process.

Grabbing her head, Kyle dug his nails into her scalp. She kicked and screamed, pulling herself and him backwards with her violent thrashing. Lillian kicked her knee forwards, pushing all her momentum into his stomach.

The force threw him back, but the release she was looking for never came. Kyle took her with him, stubbornly. His murderous craving refused to lose control of anything. All his eyes wanted to see was her lifeless body. All his hands wanted to feel was her cold corpse.

A loose rug caused Kyle’s feet to slip and it shook his tunnel vision. Falling, Kyle’s back smashed into a window. It exploded in brilliant clear shards, sparkling like confetti and reflecting brilliant beams of refracted moonlight as it fell to the garden far below. A violent wind rushed in, throwing everything around chaotically.

Lillian pushed down on him, trying to force him out and over the sill.

“This is what you wanted, right?!” she screamed at him, her hands clutching his face, trying to force it onto the broken spikes of glass that still sat in the wooden frame. “I could have used you. We could have helped each other,” she whispered through her teeth, “but men are so shortsighted!” His face inched closer to the razor edges. “…They never get the bigger picture.” Her pale lips hissed as her unkempt hair swam about in the wind.

Kyle grabbed Lillian’s upper arms, finally gathering enough energy to control her. He nearly lifted her off the ground, straightened his back, and pivoted. The pirate pushed her against the same sill. She kicked, protesting loudly, trying to keep her feet on the ground.

Lillian felt the night wind against her back, chilling her spine.

“W-what I wanted?” Kyle brought one hand to her throat, tightening it like a clamp. “All I wanted was to get her home safe!” He felt the bilateral pulses in her neck quicken at the pressure. “But I’ll settle for putting you in the ground as consolation.”

Gasping for air, Lillian grabbed his wrist, shutting her eyes at the pain.

“Kyle! Kyle! Stop!” It was a faint sound, trying to howl louder than the wind.

The voice shattered the pirate’s vengeance. At first, he just believed that it was his dying body playing a cruel trick. But, indulging in his last fantasy, he slowly slid his eyes over his shoulder, expecting to see nothing. All his strength quivered upon seeing his princess, standing by a wraithlike man with a sword.

A knight, maybe? He was an old knight, for sure. Still, it could have been wanton figures of his imagination. But, as his vengeance evaporated, so did his hold on Lillian’s throat. Pain replaced all emotion. It voided out questions and doubt, just filling all his thoughts with bright red agony.

Lillian held a bloody blade of glass, a large piece of flesh stabbed through the jagged end.

Kyle stumbled back, leaving the queen on the sill, and held his face. Blood leaked from between his fingertips and he fell to his knees off to the side, silent, completely scattered.

“Lillian!” Jacqueline screamed as she entered the room.

“Princess, no!” Magnus shouted, trying to grab her shoulder.

It was too much to process. Lillian was queen and the only thing that could stop her was standing right before her, like a pig in a slaughterhouse. Lillian had no problem being the butcher. Screaming something inaudible, she flung herself at the Princess, grasping her bloody fingers around the glass.

“WHY WON’T YOU STAY DEAD!” Lillian shouted wholeheartedly. Jacqueline grabbed her wrists, trying to push her cousin back. “YOUR PARENTS WANTED YOU DEAD! I WANTED YOU DEAD! YOUR COUNTRY WANTS YOU DEAD!”

“STOP!” the Princess begged, the vicious blade inching towards her face, “L-LILLIAN!”

“SO JUST DIE ALREADY!”

The hallway below was filling with the sound of marching, clattering armor.

Jacqueline pushed against the queen, trying to disarm her. Lillian stepped back, her bare foot landing in a hot pool of Kyle’s blood. She lost her balance, the ball of her foot coming out from under her. Jacqueline continued to push until Lillian landed on the narrow surface windowsill, impaling her on the broken glass.

Shaking, Jacqueline fell to the floor on her hands and knees, looking up at her cousin’s feet.

Lillian was nearly beyond words, feeling the bottom of her thighs impaled by glass. Her fingers dug into the window frame, the wind twisting her hair into a wild knot. With wide eyes, she stammered, “H-help me. It…It hurts so much. I c-can’t move.”

Adding the most pitiful whimper to her voice she could muster, Lillian whined. Blood spiraled down her milky legs, weaving intricate webs of crimson to the floor. “P-please help me,” she mewed again, the pain very real, regardless of the act.

Unsteady on her feet, Jacqueline stood up. The wind blew her hair gently and her nightgown softly waved. She looked like a ghost, pale and dirty, but there was an unreadable look in her red, swollen eyes.

Confusion? Idiocy, Lillian assumed.

Skittishly, the Princess approached her cousin. Blood flowed like healthy rivers down the wood and stone walls. Lillian was literally sitting in a throne of red. Jacqueline silently offered her a trembling hand.

Lillian grabbed for it, throwing her weight into clutching it with both her cold hands, whimpering loudly. She couldn’t feel her feet.

The clattering of soldiers grew louder.

“Our Queen! Are you here?!” was echoing in the stairwell. Intense torchlight started filling the room. “Answer us!”

“I am. And I do not recognize my home anymore,” the Princess whispered as the wind carried her voice away. Instead of pulling Lillian into the room, Jacqueline pushed the false queen backward and out of the window, letting gravity do its work. The remaining glass broke free, snapping off within Lillian’s mangled flesh, and fell with her.

Wide-eyed, a look of surprise, maybe even disbelief, registered in Lillian’s mind first. It was followed by sheer, murderous terror. Taking a deep gulp of air, Lillian screamed all the way down the long length of the tower and Jacqueline peered over the window ledge, verifying just how far the fall was.

It was a generous length, just like she remembered it.

When Kyle felt hands on his shoulders, he peeked through his bloody fingers to see the old hunched knight staring at him. He then looked to the Princess’s back, who was looking outward. The room filled with the clattering of swords and armored guards.

“Soldiers! Stand down! Drop your weap—”

The click of the crossbow was faster than Magnus’s barking. Drunks tend to fire before thinking. Hearing only familiar screaming and a foreigner at the window, the guard fired directly into Jacqueline’s back.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” Magnus let out a bellowing boom, first cutting the crossbow to splinters with his sword, taking the shooter’s fingers with it, then crossing the room in one great stride, getting to Jacqueline’s side.

Kyle continued to hold his face together, gurgling out a protest. How could she live, just to die now?

“YOU’VE JUST SHOT THE TRUE QUEEN OF ROCQUEBURNE!”